


I Am Healing By Mistake

by everyperfectsummer



Series: Coldwave week [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 17:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11810817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: In the absence of therapy or a miracle, they do the best they can.





	I Am Healing By Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from "Ruins" by Eliza Griswold. Trigger warnings for past abuse! Please let me know if there's something I'm leaving out!

Being soulmates is supposed to make things easier. Sharing a bond, sharing emotions – it’s supposed to help facilitate communication, make the relationship easier, deeper, better. And a lot of the time, it does. Sometimes, though, it leaves them in situations like this, a feedback loop of negative emotions that just gets worse.

 

It starts by accident. Starts with Len coming home, leaning down to the armchair to kiss Mick, feeling Mick’s arms come up to surround him, and recoiling from the grasp as he tries to escape. The flash of fear that courses through him is as instinctive as breathing, and he feels Mick's reaction, the roiling mix of guilt and anger coming from Mick through the bond and the fear just gets worse, which makes the anger and guilt worse, and. Fuck.

 

Len’s feeling scared, and guilty for feeling scared, and angry at Mick for scaring him, and Mick’s feeling all the same things, in a different mix. He knows that Mick’s mad at Dad, not him, knows that Mick would never hurt him, but something in his hindbrain is stuck on the fact that Mick’s mad, he’s  _ mad _ , an Important Person is _mad at him_ , and is quietly beginning to panic.

 

The problem is that Mick can feel it, feel him panicking, and is getting more upset, both of them trapped in a cycle they can’t escape. Mick takes his arms from around Len slowly and deliberately, and then holds them together in his lap. Len takes a few steps backward.

 

“We ok?” Mick says, even though both of them can feel that they aren’t.

 

Len nods anyway, and then winces as it makes the storm of anger and guilt coming from Mick even worse.

 

Therapy has never been an option for them, not really; too expensive when they were younger, and now that they can afford it, too risky. They’re supervillains, they can’t afford to go around spilling their guts to someone else, someone who could easily sell them out. But with therapy off the table, the options for fixing their various issues are – well, possibly non existent, given that they haven’t found any yet.

 

Len’s not an idiot, knows that trauma and pyromania don’t just go away, knows that neither of them can ever be “fixed,” but he does know that things can get better than they are. That there are better coping strategies out there, somewhere. He just doesn’t know what they are.

 

Instead, he has to rely on distracting them both, on taking their mind of things in the hopes of making things better between them, on snapping them out of the feedback loop that they’re stuck in.

 

He looks up at Mick, makes himself smile, and says, “How ‘bout we go on a heist tonight?” They’ve been casing out the jewelery store on fifth for weeks now. Tonight’s as good a time as any.

 

Mick smiles back. “Sounds like a great idea.”

 

Guilt and fear and anger still lie heavy in the air between them, but a heist should make things better. And, hopefully, they’ll one day figure out a better way to fix things. Tonight, though, they’re going to have to settle for this. 


End file.
